


Above and Beyond the Call of Duty

by kinfic2



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:43:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5319161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinfic2/pseuds/kinfic2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place during episodes 202-205 but mostly Ep.205</p>
            </blockquote>





	Above and Beyond the Call of Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my LJ in 2009

      When Mother Taylor paid me an ill-timed visit asking me to take her son and fix him, she started with “I know we haven’t seen eye to eye.” I almost laughed in her face at the absurdity. When she ended with “I only tried to do what was best because I love him,” I deflated faster than a gay dick in pussy.  I understood then where Justin got his balls, which side of the family was responsible for his guts and determination. It must have been difficult to admit she couldn't handle him, even more difficult to swallow her pride and ask me for help.   
  
                                                         
  
      It’s hard to get mad at her, at least to stay mad. Because she cares. That’s why it took all my self-control not to deposit his ass on the sidewalk when we were driving to the loft. He was acting like such an immature twat, I questioned what I saw in him in the first place. He has no fucking idea how lucky he is to have a mother like her.  
  
      For his sake, we negotiated an uneasy truce. She gave me a laundry list of his meds and schedules with the neurosurgeon, psychologist, physical therapist, general practitioner, allergist. I’m sure I missed a couple. In return, I gave her my reassurance that I would touch and fuck her son, to get the Justin locked inside to come out and play again. I think I got the better half of the deal, but I didn’t care. We'd all be winners if I succeeded, particularly Justin.  
  
      I also had to make sure the devious shit kept the appointments. According to Jennifer, he could get all pissy on a bad day and refuse to go. Not on my watch, he wouldn't. Let's see, what else? If I noticed any other disturbing changes in his behavior, I had to promise to call the doctor because “you just never know with this type of injury.” No shit. If the headaches worsened, I had to call the doctor. If his hand cramped more often, I had to call the doctor. If he continued to fly off the handle at every little thing, including me, I had to call the doctor.  
  
      And just like that, Kinney’s Home Care Clinic was open for business, Brian Nightingale at your service. I wore all the hats—parent, pharmacist, watchdog, caretaker, sexual healer (I’m not being facetious), cheerleader, lover—in the hope that the confident young man who I considered my equal in all ways except age (I’m not being facetious here, either) would return to me. A small price to pay for having him at the loft. Alive.  
  
      But I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was doing. Even though I watched the drugs he ingested, smoked or inhaled, and kept an eye on how much he drank, I could still fuck it all up, fuck _him_ up. And it scared the crap out of me. It was like living with a time bomb or playing Russian Roulette without the bullets. I never knew what would set him off emotionally. There wasn't a specific trigger. To make the situation worse, anything could happen to him physically because of his condition or a random reaction even to the legal meds. Forget about recreational shit.   
  
      Not to pat myself on the back, although I have been known to on occasion, I was proud of how far he'd progressed. That’s why he shocked me tonight. I had been so fucking careful, and here he was, more tweaked than he'd been in a long time.  
                                
      I had just taken a much-needed bump, having endured Theodore’s sycophantic speech anointing me Friend of the Year, Emmett’s reciprocal twelve-step support kudos—I guess he hadn’t flushed all the 'see the light' crap from his system, and Mikey’s pathetic whine that his world was ending because Buzzie decided to close his rat’s nest comic store and move to Florida. About time. If anyone needed an overdose of ultraviolet rays, he did. All things considered, I should have taken another hit to dull my memory of the past few minutes.  
  
      I didn’t see him until he was in front of me. Flushed and sweaty, he was the hottest fucking thing ont he dance floor. My dick agreed too, and I wouldn’t have thought twice about dragging his butt to the back room except—glassy eyes, dilated pupils. I put on one of those damn hats again, too worried about the drugs he took and who gave them to him.  
  
                                                                           
  
      And why the fuck was he at Babylon on a school night? My Justin meter was well on its way to a Code Red. I was pretty sure no one noticed. Until I made eye contact with Ted, his weighty stare appraising me with an accountant's attention to detail. I shot him a warning glare in return, but the fucker didn’t flinch. He continued to look at me as if he fucking _knew_ what was in my head. My subliminal powers of persuasion and mental images of his dismemberment must have transcended Babylon's time and space because he gave a blink and turned his attention to Emmett. Mr. Schmidt climbed a few notches on the Kinney ladder.  
                                              

                                                                           
  
      Justin couldn't stand still. He needed a distraction, so I did what I do best. I grabbed him by the neck and forced my tongue down his throat. He grinded against me, hard as a rock. I pressed back, and his head flopped backwards, as if his neck muscles had disappeared. In his condition, he would have let me fuck him on the dance floor. When he's out-of-his-mind horny, his need to fuck short circuits higher reasoning and moves his brain to his cock. There’s nothing the little slut won’t do, nothing he won’t try. Yep, we’re a match made in homo heaven.  
  
      With his uncontrolled hopping, the half-naked bodies and pulsing music, I somehow wound up in a fucking porno movie, _The Bouncing Bunny Does Babylon._ I put my hands on his shoulders and steered him toward the bar. Okay, I’ll come clean. I bizarrely pictured us doing the bunny hop on the way there. Sue me. I shoved a bottle of water into his hand and made sure he drank most of it. But I couldn't resist lapping up the trickles on his chin.  
  
     “Brian, I wanna fuck.”  
  
      No kidding, Sunshine. I never would have guessed. Tempted as I was by the squirming heat, I held his head steady and leaned down. “What the fuck are you doing here? You even tried to turn down a spectacular blowjob last night because today was your first day at school.”  
                                                     
      He jerked away and I caught a flash of something in his eyes I had never seen before, something so disturbing, so unsettling that my blood ran cold. Despair.

     “You don’t get it, do you?” His brittle voice sliced through the din.  
  
                                                                          
  
     “No, I don’t get it.” Now I really was on edge. “Why don’t you tell me what the fuck you’re talking about?”  
  
      His jaw clenched and he spat in tweaked-out glory, “I quit!”  
  
      My cold blood congealed to ice. What the fuck?  
  
     “You know, _school!_ Don’t look so fucking surprised, Brian. I can’t draw anymore. Why the fuck should I waste my time when I can be sucking and fucking every night like you?” His bobbing head reminded me of one those godamn bobble dolls. “I can take drugs and drink all the time. Wow, maybe I could become one of the dancers.”  
  
      Warming to his drug-induced ramble, he jumped up and down like a human basketball dribbled by an unseen force. “I could make a lot of money. Don’t need any skills. Don’t need to control my gimp hand.” He stared at it in disgust, then whiplashed me with his words. “But I don’t need a lot of control to squeeze and suck, right? Of all people, you should know.”  
  
      He tugged at the waistband of the nearest bare-chested dancer. “Wanna dance?” The guys' face lit up at the invitation. Before tugging his conquest onto the dance floor, he whirled around. “You coming?”  
                                            

                                                                    
  
      I didn’t know if I wanted to smack him, kiss him, hold him or fuck him. I did know that I wasn’t joining him and his new friend. I shook my head and ordered a beer as the sea of writhing bodies swallowed him up.  
  
      I had already chugged half the liquid when Mikey approached me. “What’s up with him?” He nodded toward the blond gyrating figure.  
  
                                                                             
  
      More clear-headed than I had intended or wanted to be, I slammed the bottle down, grabbed him in a hug and whispered in his ear, “Pain management.”   
  
      With my search and rescue hat firmly in place, I headed into the throng to collect my lost boy and take him home.  
  
_“When you lose something you can’t replace,_ _and the tears come streaming down your face,_  
_When you try your best but you don’t succeed,_ _I will try to fix you.”_ _©C.Martin_

                                                                                                          * * * *  
  
      He thinks he can fucking fix everything. He can't! What the fuck is he going to do? Buy me a bionic hand to replace this _thing_ at the end of my arm? That's always his solution. If he can’t get rid of a problem with fucking or drinking, he tries gets rid of it with money.  
  
      I have a news flash for him. It’s not going to work this time. Nothing’s going to work, particularly my hand. Hobbs took care of that, and for his unsuccessful but heartfelt attempt to kill me, he received five hundred hours of community service. His punishment certainly fit his crime. Coma, headaches, loss of memory and motor skills, nightmares and other emotional problems vs. washing floors at the AIDS hospice for a few months. Seems about even.  
  
      I fought the somersaults in my stomach last night, the ones that threatened a puke session all over the duvet. No matter how loosely I held the pencil, my hand cramped. I had hoped that giving Brian the blowjob would help. It usually does. I feel powerful and in control when his dick hardens in my mouth, when it twitches in my hand, when it pulses as he comes. But it didn't work. And I knew. I fucking knew.   
  
      If his aimless pacing in the loft this morning was an indication, he was as nervous as I was. It didn't do the job I guess, so he resorted to his other comfort routine, anal-retentiveness. He perfectly aligned the folders on his desk, shifted papers from one pile to another without reading them, and arranged the magazines on the coffee table. You get the idea. But thank God he masked the outward concern with his usual smirk and sarcasm.  Anything remotely serious would have pushed me into major queen-out territory.  
  
      The day went by really fast. The classes were great. They were interesting and challenging, and I was doing really well until the last one. Life Drawing 101 is an introductory course, but you need precision and control to define muscle structure with the human skeleton. It’s more difficult than people realize, and I don't mean the obvious distraction of the male model’s ass.  
  
      My hand started to stiffen in the afternoon. I was almost finished with my sketch when the tremors began. Everyone was gone, but I couldn't leave. I had to make it better and prove this wasn't the end. Engrossed in my work, I didn't see or hear Dean Ryerson stroll into the room. His timing couldn't have been worse.  
  
     “Mr. Taylor, you’re working rather late. I applaud diligence in all forms, but aren’t you carrying it to the extreme? This is only the first day. You have a whole semester yet.”  
  
      My gut clenched. I knew why he was here. Professor Stanley told him I was having problems. I wish she hadn’t. I wish she had given me more time. That’s all I needed, a little more fucking time.  
  
     “May I take a look at your work?” His tone was casual and conversational, but underneath? Let’s just say that after being with Brian for over a year, my reading-between-the-lines skills would earn me an A in any school.  
  
      I wanted to throw up. What could I say or do to convince him that I was the same Justin Taylor admitted to PIFA based solely on his talent? Nothing. Because I didn't believe it.  
  
      I muttered some lame excuse that it wasn't finished and held my breath as he flipped through the pages. Each rustle of paper stabbed my gimp hand, my bashed head, and my broken heart. He returned the pad to the easel and a bugle dirge played in my head.  
  
     “You’re very talented, Justin. You wouldn’t have been admitted to PIFA if you weren’t, but the curriculum is extremely rigorous and requires—”  
  
     “I’m well aware what the course requires, Dean Ryerson.”  
  
     “Then perhaps you should seriously consider another—”  
  
     “Don't bother!” I launched myself from the stool and threw my supplies into the backpack. “I’ll make it easy for you. Give my place to someone who can draw, who deserves to be here. It’s obviously not me.”  
  
      I filled out the required forms for early withdrawal in a daze, then retraced my steps down the cavernous hall where a few hours earlier, I literally skipped with anticipation. Now the squeak of my sneakers boomed like a twenty-one gun salute to a fallen soldier.  
  
      With my hand on the ornate door handle, I glanced around one last time to say goodbye to my future, to mentally photograph the vision of unlimited possibilities. For some weird reason, I remembered a famous line from a TV show my parents used to watch, _Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In._  
  
     “Say goodbye, Justin.”  
  
     “ ‘Goodbye, Justin.’”  
  
      I flung open the door and didn't look back. My only thought was what I should wear tonight at Babylon.  
  
_“I had a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I’m living._  
_So different now from what it seemed._ _Now life has killed the dream in me.”_ _©Schonberg  
_


End file.
